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Thursday, October 4, 2012

I try and get 2 or 3 games in every Tuesday, but I rarely remember to take pictures of all my games. Lately I have been trying to do better in order to make sure I at least get one post onto the blog each week. Battle Reports are fun to post up and a good way for me to go back and see how things have gone in my games. Add that to the far more accurate game log I keep online (look left if your interested) and the bat-reps with pictures work out well.

With all that said, this week I actually took pictures of both games that I played. Yesterday you got to read about my latest Jakob Lynch outing, taking him as a Ten Thunders master. After Slaz and I finished up that game, I grabbed Tim and we played a game. Tim was a little tired of facing Jakob (come on, its only been a couple games), and I wanted to get Misaki on the table. Convy is working on my Ten Thunders commision, having completed my archers and Yamaziko. He is still working on the Misaki box set, so I am playing without Shang and with Minion Misaki as my master model. That said, the Misaki he painted up for me is beautiful and may stick around as my long-term master Misaki model. Pictures will be coming soon.

Set-up
So, we jumped into our game, using the same board I had used in my game vs Slaz. For those who may not have read (or remembered) yesterdays post, here is the board.

I picked out the crew I wanted to play before flipping Strategies, which is rarely a good idea. Playing around with crews like this is one reason I probably lose so many games. I was joking with Tim that I certainly hoped I flipped Slaughter, since I thought the crew would be really good at that. That was not to be as I flipped Supply Wagon, but Tim did end up with Slaughter which would make things interesting. Tim is still getting models painted for his Zoraida crew, so he dropped to an old standby crew to play. We ended up with Diagonal deployment with me ending up in the right hand side while Tim took the left and deployed first.

Turn 1
I knew Tim would be out-activating me turn 1, and I also knew that if I wasn't careful Lilith would be able to snatch up one of my models with Transposition and probably kill it off. I wanted to do what I could to minimize the chance of that happening and also wanted to give him a chance to make a mistake that I could capitalize on. I started out slowly, moving my 10T brother behind the house forward under Defensive Stance, passing with my other 10T brother after putting up Defensive Stance, and Moving Kang forward to keep on the Wagon. In the interim Tim had moved his Desperate Merc forward behind the house on his side, stacked up a tot behind it, then the BBS behind that, using blood in the air to group everything together and then cutting itself for a blood. I realized at this point of the game that Yamaziko could put up a WP buff in an 8 inch bubble which would help resist the transposition if it happened. Damn new models. I had Yamaziko put the buff up, walk forward to position for future Misaki positioning, then braced her spear in case Lilith transpositioned her into a charge position. Tim responded by having the Puke Snake use Earth Quake to move his whole crew slightly forward. My Ronin moved up behind the house and Tim started cutting apart his desperate merc with a Young Nephilim, killing it, healing the BBS, and growing into a mature. Misaki moved up to just in front of Yamaziko and I was out of activations. Tim ran a Young and a Tot to the right across the board, and then swung Lilith around the front of the house, positioned to lure Misaki into a charge on her.

Turn 2

Tim got initiative on turn 2 and moved his Tot behind the small house on the right. I was really tempted to throw Misaki into Lilith to start the turn off, but looking at my hand it was not a great hand, with only one severe and two 9's as my best three cards. I only had one ram in hand (one of the 9's) for decapitate and no masks for pilfer. Tim and I had proxied several matches with Misaki, but had not faced off between these two masters so I was unsure how well I would hold up. I held off and instead moved Kang up to buy myself some time, positining him where the Wagon would end up at the end of the turn. Tim moved his Young over behind the house with the Tot, I shifted my 10T brother nearest Misaki forward, putting up defensive stance again. This was going to be a waiting game. Tim sprinted the second Tot over behind the house, preparing a whole nest of nephilim I would have to go after eventually. He knew I wanted to see some combat and was staging things based on that. Smart play at this point would be to wait for him to come to me, but I really wanted to see what Misaki could do. I used the Defensive ability on the Ronin and walked forward, Tim wandered across the back of the board with the BBS, keeping it safe. I went into defensive stance with Yamaziko, bracing and putting up the WP bubble. I could see how Lilith could make this nasty for me. The Puking Snake cast Illusionary Forest (the token between the wall and the house across the board is the center of the forest). At this point I just could not wait any longer, so Misaki activated and moved toward the Nephilim group, charging the Tot after that. She hit and killed the tot, pulling the Young and other tot closer to her with thier response move. She then used her Melee Expert but missed the young. Lilith responded by moving over and attacking, missing both attacks on Misaki. My remaining 10T brother moved forward in defensive stance and the Mature parked himself on the far side of the house from Misaki.

And a look at the melee going on near the house on the far side of the board:

Turn 3

Turn three was the blood-bath I had been waiting for, with me pulling initiative. Honestly, my hand was pretty bad with a pair of moderates and no severe cards in hand but I was stuck in so decided to go for it. Misaki activated first and attacked Lilith, missing but still putting up Your Mine. This was possibly a mistake and in the future I would go a different way I think. Regardless, I drove on by using my first two AP to kill the Young in front of me, and my second AP to kill the Tot behind the house. Between Reckless and Black Blood I was 3 wounds down at this point but had cleared several Nephilim out of his crew. Tim activated Lilith and started on Misaki. Three attacks later Misaki was out of stones and dead, and Tim was down to 2 stones remaining. Lilith then used Brood Mother to activate the Mature and it diving charged the 10T brother, landing on the far side of the wall but only dropping 3 wounds on the brother. Now I had to figure out how to win this game. My 10T brother closest to Lilith put up Terrifying and did his combat push, moving to 2 inches away from the Mature to avoid Black Blood, attacking the Mature, then finishing his push and using Melee expert to attack and miss Lilith. Tim wandered across the back of the board with the BBS, I responded by moving the Ronin forward and taking a shot at the Mature, hitting for a couple wounds. Tim tried to earthquake with the snake but failed. Yamaziko moved forward to get in position to kill either the Snake or the BBS, Kang left the Wagon to join the fight, leaving the remaining 10T brother to protect the wagon.

Turn 4

Turn 4 gave Tim initiative, so he started out with Lilith attacking the 10T brother, putting him in defensive stance after the first attack, hitting once for 3 dg, then missing. Following that she Brood Mothered the Mature who charged the Ronin and took her down to her Hard to Kill. I activated Yamaziko and chose to heal the 10T brother (a mistake, I should have healed the Ronin), then moved her toward the BBS, just making it into the 3 inch range after a double walk. The BBS activated and walked up to Yamaziko, casting a spell that did damage to her then cutting himself for 4wd's, taking himself to 1 remaining and killing Yamaziko with the black blood splash. The Ronin pushed with her push and attack action, attacking when she was 2 inches from the Mature and then missing with her melee expert attack. The 10T brother pushed out of combat with Lilith, attacking and missing as he left, then could not make it into range of either the BBS or the Snake. The snake moved out to get close to the BBS, casting earthquake which only moved Kang and the BBS. Kang was now in a nice line to charge the Mature so did, but failed his terrifying on declaring the charge. I did not have the cards to cheat, so he fell back to the closest board edge, which was directly toward and past the mature. This left Kang in between the Mature and Lilith, ouch. The 10T brother near the wagon moved to the center of the board to wait for said wagon.

Turn 5

Turn 5 was an ugly turn. I drew another very sad hand, making this the third time in the game I wish I was playing Jakob so I could mulligan. I got initiative and activated Kang, finally passing my terrifying and then letting loose on the Mature, hitting it even on a negative twist and getting a Red Joker/Severe on the damage, Go Go shovel to the face! His second and third attacks were on Lilith to no effect. Tim moved his BBS around to be next to Lilith and gave her Flurry with one of his spells. The 10T brother not protecting the wagon double walked over to the BBS and Lilith, but missed his attack, then put up Terrifying. Lilith activated, used her first AP to kill the 10T brother, then flurried on Kang, killing him. In reply, my Ronin focused a shot to kill the BBS and grab my Kill Protege. The Snake tried to do something I cannot remember, without effect (might have been an attempt at Transposition that failed?).

Turn 6

Turn 6 started with the Ronin and 10T brother activating on Companion. The Ronin focused a shot on Lilith but missed, and the 10T brother went Defensive stance and danced behind the wagon. Lilith charged the Ronin and killed her. The Snake then cast Transposition, swapping the Ronin and Lilith's positions.

Tim and I should have checked at this point to see if the game ended, but I had mis-marked my turn tracker and we both thought it was the end of turn 5. If the game had ended here I would have had 6 points (4 from Supply Wagon and 2 from Kill Protege. Tim would have had 4, 2 from Slaughter, and 2 from Kill Protege. The game would have been a win to me, but we kept playing another turn.

Turn 7 & 8

I got initiative on turn 7, went defensive stance and moved to within 2 inches of the Supply Wagon, directly opposite Lilith. Lilith moved around the wagon, positioning between the 10T brother and the wagon. She attacked and squeaked through a hit on the 10T brother, ending up doing enough damage to kill him. Her last attack was to hit the wagon once to put some damage on it. We flipped at the end of the turn and the game went on to another turn. With the last turn Lilith wrecked the wagon to bring Tim's total to 6.

The game ended finaly with Lilith winning 6/2. The Mature Nephilim was large enough of a SS difference to off-set his killing my whole crew, keeping it from being 150% my total. He had killed 39SS worth of models to my 28SS worth.

I must pay more attention to the turns. Hell, I have to pay more attention to the game as I made some key mistakes at a couple points through this game. With that said, I am not unhappy with how the game ended up. Misaki is a lot of fun, but I need to play her like I would play any other melee masters. There is no need to rush forward early in the game and leave her unsupported. While she can do a great job of killing things, I really do not need the Shock and Awe move to win games with her.

I am certainly looking forward to getting more games in with Misaki. I would like to add in an archer and a Torekage, while dropping out or swapping around some other models. As this was my first non-proxy game with her, I see her coming up more in the future.

I try and get 2 or 3 games in every Tuesday, but I rarely remember to take pictures of all my games. Lately I have been trying to do better in order to make sure I at least get one post onto the blog each week. Battle Reports are fun to post up and a good way for me to go back and see how things have gone in my games. Add that to the far more accurate game log I keep online (look left if your interested) and the bat-reps with pictures work out well.

With all that said, this week I actually took pictures of both games that I played. Yesterday you got to read about my latest Jakob Lynch outing, taking him as a Ten Thunders master. After Slaz and I finished up that game, I grabbed Tim and we played a game. Tim was a little tired of facing Jakob (come on, its only been a couple games), and I wanted to get Misaki on the table. Convy is working on my Ten Thunders commision, having completed my archers and Yamaziko. He is still working on the Misaki box set, so I am playing without Shang and with Minion Misaki as my master model. That said, the Misaki he painted up for me is beautiful and may stick around as my long-term master Misaki model. Pictures will be coming soon.

Set-up
So, we jumped into our game, using the same board I had used in my game vs Slaz. For those who may not have read (or remembered) yesterdays post, here is the board.

I picked out the crew I wanted to play before flipping Strategies, which is rarely a good idea. Playing around with crews like this is one reason I probably lose so many games. I was joking with Tim that I certainly hoped I flipped Slaughter, since I thought the crew would be really good at that. That was not to be as I flipped Supply Wagon, but Tim did end up with Slaughter which would make things interesting. Tim is still getting models painted for his Zoraida crew, so he dropped to an old standby crew to play. We ended up with Diagonal deployment with me ending up in the right hand side while Tim took the left and deployed first.

Turn 1
I knew Tim would be out-activating me turn 1, and I also knew that if I wasn't careful Lilith would be able to snatch up one of my models with Transposition and probably kill it off. I wanted to do what I could to minimize the chance of that happening and also wanted to give him a chance to make a mistake that I could capitalize on. I started out slowly, moving my 10T brother behind the house forward under Defensive Stance, passing with my other 10T brother after putting up Defensive Stance, and Moving Kang forward to keep on the Wagon. In the interim Tim had moved his Desperate Merc forward behind the house on his side, stacked up a tot behind it, then the BBS behind that, using blood in the air to group everything together and then cutting itself for a blood. I realized at this point of the game that Yamaziko could put up a WP buff in an 8 inch bubble which would help resist the transposition if it happened. Damn new models. I had Yamaziko put the buff up, walk forward to position for future Misaki positioning, then braced her spear in case Lilith transpositioned her into a charge position. Tim responded by having the Puke Snake use Earth Quake to move his whole crew slightly forward. My Ronin moved up behind the house and Tim started cutting apart his desperate merc with a Young Nephilim, killing it, healing the BBS, and growing into a mature. Misaki moved up to just in front of Yamaziko and I was out of activations. Tim ran a Young and a Tot to the right across the board, and then swung Lilith around the front of the house, positioned to lure Misaki into a charge on her.

Turn 2

Tim got initiative on turn 2 and moved his Tot behind the small house on the right. I was really tempted to throw Misaki into Lilith to start the turn off, but looking at my hand it was not a great hand, with only one severe and two 9's as my best three cards. I only had one ram in hand (one of the 9's) for decapitate and no masks for pilfer. Tim and I had proxied several matches with Misaki, but had not faced off between these two masters so I was unsure how well I would hold up. I held off and instead moved Kang up to buy myself some time, positining him where the Wagon would end up at the end of the turn. Tim moved his Young over behind the house with the Tot, I shifted my 10T brother nearest Misaki forward, putting up defensive stance again. This was going to be a waiting game. Tim sprinted the second Tot over behind the house, preparing a whole nest of nephilim I would have to go after eventually. He knew I wanted to see some combat and was staging things based on that. Smart play at this point would be to wait for him to come to me, but I really wanted to see what Misaki could do. I used the Defensive ability on the Ronin and walked forward, Tim wandered across the back of the board with the BBS, keeping it safe. I went into defensive stance with Yamaziko, bracing and putting up the WP bubble. I could see how Lilith could make this nasty for me. The Puking Snake cast Illusionary Forest (the token between the wall and the house across the board is the center of the forest). At this point I just could not wait any longer, so Misaki activated and moved toward the Nephilim group, charging the Tot after that. She hit and killed the tot, pulling the Young and other tot closer to her with thier response move. She then used her Melee Expert but missed the young. Lilith responded by moving over and attacking, missing both attacks on Misaki. My remaining 10T brother moved forward in defensive stance and the Mature parked himself on the far side of the house from Misaki.

And a look at the melee going on near the house on the far side of the board:

Turn 3

Turn three was the blood-bath I had been waiting for, with me pulling initiative. Honestly, my hand was pretty bad with a pair of moderates and no severe cards in hand but I was stuck in so decided to go for it. Misaki activated first and attacked Lilith, missing but still putting up Your Mine. This was possibly a mistake and in the future I would go a different way I think. Regardless, I drove on by using my first two AP to kill the Young in front of me, and my second AP to kill the Tot behind the house. Between Reckless and Black Blood I was 3 wounds down at this point but had cleared several Nephilim out of his crew. Tim activated Lilith and started on Misaki. Three attacks later Misaki was out of stones and dead, and Tim was down to 2 stones remaining. Lilith then used Brood Mother to activate the Mature and it diving charged the 10T brother, landing on the far side of the wall but only dropping 3 wounds on the brother. Now I had to figure out how to win this game. My 10T brother closest to Lilith put up Terrifying and did his combat push, moving to 2 inches away from the Mature to avoid Black Blood, attacking the Mature, then finishing his push and using Melee expert to attack and miss Lilith. Tim wandered across the back of the board with the BBS, I responded by moving the Ronin forward and taking a shot at the Mature, hitting for a couple wounds. Tim tried to earthquake with the snake but failed. Yamaziko moved forward to get in position to kill either the Snake or the BBS, Kang left the Wagon to join the fight, leaving the remaining 10T brother to protect the wagon.

Turn 4

Turn 4 gave Tim initiative, so he started out with Lilith attacking the 10T brother, putting him in defensive stance after the first attack, hitting once for 3 dg, then missing. Following that she Brood Mothered the Mature who charged the Ronin and took her down to her Hard to Kill. I activated Yamaziko and chose to heal the 10T brother (a mistake, I should have healed the Ronin), then moved her toward the BBS, just making it into the 3 inch range after a double walk. The BBS activated and walked up to Yamaziko, casting a spell that did damage to her then cutting himself for 4wd's, taking himself to 1 remaining and killing Yamaziko with the black blood splash. The Ronin pushed with her push and attack action, attacking when she was 2 inches from the Mature and then missing with her melee expert attack. The 10T brother pushed out of combat with Lilith, attacking and missing as he left, then could not make it into range of either the BBS or the Snake. The snake moved out to get close to the BBS, casting earthquake which only moved Kang and the BBS. Kang was now in a nice line to charge the Mature so did, but failed his terrifying on declaring the charge. I did not have the cards to cheat, so he fell back to the closest board edge, which was directly toward and past the mature. This left Kang in between the Mature and Lilith, ouch. The 10T brother near the wagon moved to the center of the board to wait for said wagon.

Turn 5

Turn 5 was an ugly turn. I drew another very sad hand, making this the third time in the game I wish I was playing Jakob so I could mulligan. I got initiative and activated Kang, finally passing my terrifying and then letting loose on the Mature, hitting it even on a negative twist and getting a Red Joker/Severe on the damage, Go Go shovel to the face! His second and third attacks were on Lilith to no effect. Tim moved his BBS around to be next to Lilith and gave her Flurry with one of his spells. The 10T brother not protecting the wagon double walked over to the BBS and Lilith, but missed his attack, then put up Terrifying. Lilith activated, used her first AP to kill the 10T brother, then flurried on Kang, killing him. In reply, my Ronin focused a shot to kill the BBS and grab my Kill Protege. The Snake tried to do something I cannot remember, without effect (might have been an attempt at Transposition that failed?).

Turn 6

Turn 6 started with the Ronin and 10T brother activating on Companion. The Ronin focused a shot on Lilith but missed, and the 10T brother went Defensive stance and danced behind the wagon. Lilith charged the Ronin and killed her. The Snake then cast Transposition, swapping the Ronin and Lilith's positions.

Tim and I should have checked at this point to see if the game ended, but I had mis-marked my turn tracker and we both thought it was the end of turn 5. If the game had ended here I would have had 6 points (4 from Supply Wagon and 2 from Kill Protege. Tim would have had 4, 2 from Slaughter, and 2 from Kill Protege. The game would have been a win to me, but we kept playing another turn.

Turn 7 & 8

I got initiative on turn 7, went defensive stance and moved to within 2 inches of the Supply Wagon, directly opposite Lilith. Lilith moved around the wagon, positioning between the 10T brother and the wagon. She attacked and squeaked through a hit on the 10T brother, ending up doing enough damage to kill him. Her last attack was to hit the wagon once to put some damage on it. We flipped at the end of the turn and the game went on to another turn. With the last turn Lilith wrecked the wagon to bring Tim's total to 6.

The game ended finaly with Lilith winning 6/2. The Mature Nephilim was large enough of a SS difference to off-set his killing my whole crew, keeping it from being 150% my total. He had killed 39SS worth of models to my 28SS worth.

I must pay more attention to the turns. Hell, I have to pay more attention to the game as I made some key mistakes at a couple points through this game. With that said, I am not unhappy with how the game ended up. Misaki is a lot of fun, but I need to play her like I would play any other melee masters. There is no need to rush forward early in the game and leave her unsupported. While she can do a great job of killing things, I really do not need the Shock and Awe move to win games with her.

I am certainly looking forward to getting more games in with Misaki. I would like to add in an archer and a Torekage, while dropping out or swapping around some other models. As this was my first non-proxy game with her, I see her coming up more in the future.